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two helicopter pilots flying over Louisville, Kentucky

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are confronted with a strange glowing object.

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When it came back in our sight,

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that's when it shot the three fireballs out.

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I think they really thought at the time

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that this was something shooting at.

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The Brazilian Air Force investigates an Amazonian town

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that has been terrorized by a series of bizarre attacks.

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They were dealing with something knocked from the sky.

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And a young man driving along a dark and lonely Australian road

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dies in a mysterious car crash.

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As police investigate the death,

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another driver comes forward claiming the crash could have been caused by a UFO.

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You can see in his eyes that man had experienced something truly unknown.

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Does anyone know what these phenomena are?

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And do our governments know more than they ever reveal to us?

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The answers may lie in these fascinating stories of UFO conspiracies.

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Louisville, Kentucky, February 27, 1993

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A police helicopter is on routine night patrol over the city.

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On board are officers Kenny Downs and Kenny Graham.

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Graham is a seasoned pilot with 11 years' experience on the force.

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We had been up for about an hour,

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and we were landing back at our heliport where we took the helicopter,

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and a call came out of a possible break-in

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at a location roughly three miles from where we were.

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So we started in the direction of the call,

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and when we got near an officer in one of the cars,

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the council said it was not a break-in.

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But at that point, Kenny saw a light.

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We brought the helicopter to a hover, and we were looking straight at it.

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It came up, it looked like it came out of a tree line

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and just came right up towards the helicopter, and it stopped.

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It seemed to be sort of an egg-shaped glow.

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But as we looked at it further, the glow was inside this sort of transparent encasement.

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We got the feeling that it was trying to figure out what we were

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at the same time we were trying to figure out what it was.

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I didn't know what it was gonna do, what it was capable of.

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I just wanted to keep clear of it, but keep it in sight.

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I said, I'm gonna get on the radio, and I'm gonna call for some cars to come over here,

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and hopefully they'll see the same thing we are, and so I did.

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Jefferson County police officer, Joe Smolenski, takes the call.

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Within moments, he too is tracking the same mysterious object.

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But up in the skies, the light doesn't stay visible for much longer.

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And then all of a sudden, it just took off up and out, and it went very high, very fast.

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And we were flying along and then trying to see where it went,

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and then Kenny all of a sudden yells out, Kenny, it's chasing us, it's chasing us.

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That's when it started circling, and it kind of circled us a couple of times.

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And then after it circled a couple of times, it stopped again in front of the helicopter.

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And then when it came back in our sight the second time, that's when it shot the three fireballs out.

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And it shot out three fireballs, just like you would see on Star Trek with their full-ton torpedoes.

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And as it did that, our bank left.

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Five hundred feet beneath Graham's helicopter, officer Joe Smolenski has parked his patrol car in a quiet industrial neighborhood.

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He too reports witnessing the fireball attack.

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And then when I came back around to see where it was, it was gone.

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The pilot's encounter lasts no more than a few minutes, but both officers are shaken by the experience.

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The pilot's encounter lasts no more than a few minutes, but both officers are shaken by the experience.

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We both looked at each other and we both looked like we had just ran a marathon.

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And we were kind of excited, and we went in, we thought about it, we sat down and talked to each other about it for a few minutes.

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And we thought, well, we better call our boss.

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We were on the ground and it was just, just now at this point, what was it? What was it?

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And we tried to think of anything that it could have been.

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As police officers, the two men feel it is a very serious matter.

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But the scale of the media interest takes them by surprise.

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I believe in this earth and people and anything is possible, that's all I can say.

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I'm not saying it wasn't man-made. I'm, you know, I'm, I just know, I know it was traveling speeds I've never seen before.

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I personally did not want to talk to the press, but at the same time we're police officers and we have to tell what we see.

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We can't just say, well, we're going to be in the police, we're going to be in the police, we're going to be in the police.

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We're going to be in the police, we're going to be in the police, we're going to be in the police.

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At the same time we're police officers and we have to tell what we see.

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We can't hide anything from the public.

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I took some ridicule from fellow officers and some people that were not police officers when they came out in the news.

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They told me I was crazy because people are going to think I'm crazy, but I saw what I saw and I'm very proud of, you know, being me

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and being able to say, okay, this is what I saw and standing back what I saw.

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Glenn Rutherford is a journalist working in Louisville at the time of the incident.

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I didn't know what to make of it at the time because here were two officers of the law, experienced aviators, who make some of the best witnesses in the world when it comes to things like this.

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Glenn believes the sighting is all the more significant because of the men's esteemed position within the community.

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I know them through friends in the police department and they were all very highly thought of, so they wouldn't make something like this up.

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The two pilots are keen to know if their sighting could be confirmed by anyone else.

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Shortly after landing, they contact the Air Traffic Control Tower at the nearby airport.

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We contacted Blueville International and asked the traffic controllers if they had spotted anything on their radar and they said no, but they were wondering why we were flying in circles like we were flying.

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With three reliable witnesses to the object but no signal on radar, the mystery seems destined to go unexplained until a local couple approached the press with an extraordinary claim.

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This gentleman comes forward and says, here's what I did and I wondered why are they flying around it?

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Two police helicopter pilots have a strange encounter with a glowing object in the night sky.

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The media coverage generated by their sighting produces a compelling rational explanation.

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Shortly after the event, a local couple approached the press claiming they were responsible for the floating object in the sky.

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The couple had come forward to say, you know, what was really shooting at you was in fact this hot air balloon that we made out of a laundry bag and cardboard and birthday cake candles.

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Ready? Let's go.

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This video shows how a similar homemade balloon rises quickly when filled with the hot air from a small flame.

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This gentleman comes forward and says, here's what I did. I made this, I saw the helicopter and I wondered why are they flying around it?

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Well, I think there was someone just trying to get his 15 minutes of fame.

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We were up there, we saw this object, there was no wood in it, we were close enough to see.

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A balloon would have floated. That traveled at least a mile, a mile, half a way and it was going too fast. A balloon couldn't have done that.

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Commercial helicopter pilot David Higgins disagrees.

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He believes that the airflow produced by helicopter rotor blades is capable of forcing lightweight objects around the sky at high speeds.

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In and around the helicopter there is a lot of disturbed air. So if something like a Chinese lantern or a helium balloon, child's helium balloon entered that area of disturbed air, they would move erratically.

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Higgins also believes that the balloon theory could explain the object's absence from radar.

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Air traffic control radar does have its limitations. So if an object is very small and very slow moving, it may not be detected on radar.

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So I wouldn't be surprised as a pilot if a balloon doesn't produce a radar return.

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And what of the fireballs that were observed shooting out? Not just by the two pilots, but also by Officer Smolensky on the ground.

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Glenn Rutherford thinks there's a simple explanation.

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One of them said he's shooting at me. And I think it's because the falling parts of burning paper and whatnot coming off of the hot air balloon may well have looked like projectiles being fired at the helicopter.

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And it's easy to see how it can happen because when you're in the air, that added dimension is confusing for people.

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But the two pilots are adamant that whatever fired at them that night remains unexplained.

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There's no way that this could be a balloon that somebody would fly. No way possible.

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I don't see how it could have shot three fireballs out. The biggest thing that I have is, I'd like to know what explanation there is if there is one.

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When the projectiles were fired, it was like I said, it was something like off a Star Trek. The only thing I could say is that we saw it. I don't think we'll ever get to the bottom of this one.

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But for Glenn Rutherford, the evidence for a homemade balloon is overwhelming and he considers the case closed.

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The problem with the phenomena, with the whole study of UFO events to me is that so many of these people want so desperately for this to be real to them that they'll discount evidence that's obvious.

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Calares, Brazil, July 1977. It's a warm evening in this small fishing town on the fringes of the Amazon rainforest. Local resident Carmen Vale is getting ready to go to sleep.

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Now 82 years old, she vividly recalls the events of that night.

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I was dosing, not completely sleeping but not completely awake and it was probably about 11 at night. Suddenly I was disturbed by something above me.

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It was a light. It landed on my arm. Then I was numb, unable to move.

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Carmen claims to feel a searing light piercing her arm.

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When it finally let go of me, I started rubbing my arm. It was agony.

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And then the next morning, I didn't want to get out of bed. When I woke up, it was already 11. I felt so weak.

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Because of her weakness, Carmen is unable to work for a month following the incident. And the strangest thing of all, she's not alone.

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Throughout the summer of 1977, dozens of glowing lights are seen darting around the skies over the stretch of coastline. And they're even observed at sea.

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Local fisherman Rodrigo Oranha de Oliveira had his own strange encounter.

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That same year, he's fishing the Calara's coastline with his 15-year-old brother. It's late at night when they spot a small object high in the sky above.

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At that moment, it focused its light on us, right onto our boat. Everything seemed to be a deep red, like Burgundy. Then my brother panicked. He wanted to jump into the water.

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I said, easy brother, easy brother. I was trying to calm him down. As it stayed focused on us, it felt so powerful.

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My brother calmed down. Everything seemed to happen so fast. Afterwards, he started to feel unwell and fell ill.

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Rodrigo's brother survives the encounter, but the story is far from over.

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Soon, other witnesses come forward, this time bearing strange, unexplained scars.

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Usually, there were two little holes or parallel puncture marks on either side of the body.

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In 1977, reports of UFO sightings spread through the Brazilian town of Calara's.

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Often, people report being struck by a sharp, powerful light.

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This is followed by a biting sensation, which drains them of energy and leaves mysterious marks on the skin.

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It soon earns a gruesome nickname, chupa-chupa, meaning the sucker.

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I felt all sorts of emotions, fear, despair, because these things were attacking the people, and it was happening everywhere. It was a disaster for Calaris.

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Carlos Mendez is a journalist who at the time is working in Belém, the state capital, 40 miles south of Calara's.

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That year, the terrified people of Calara's reach out for help.

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The residents contacted the newspaper and told me what was happening there, and that I needed to go. So I did.

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Mendez is shocked to find a community in chaos.

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The people were in a charged emotional state. They were distressed and confused.

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Bonfires are lit along the seafront, and locals create a cacophony of noise in an attempt to ward off the chupa-chupa.

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But the UFO sightings continue.

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They would explain how the lights came from the sky and would direct their beams on them, and would make them dizzy.

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So what exactly are they seeing? And is there anything to explain their violent physical reactions?

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Dr. Robert Bartholomew is a sociologist who has studied the Calara story.

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He believes that the reason so many people were affected can be explained by a phenomenon known as mass hysteria.

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Mass hysteria is the rapid spread of illness signs and symptoms for which there is no identifiable cause.

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Mass hysteria is actually when people become physically ill.

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Bartholomew points out that the most significant element in such cases is word of mouth.

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If I give someone a drink of water, and suddenly someone comes in the room and says, oh, there's poison in it, they might actually vomit and get physically sick, but there's nothing wrong with them.

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So it's the rapid spread of illness like that among a group, and it's usually spread by a belief.

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But what of the injuries? Can hysteria really account for the burns and strange marks on the victims?

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Dr. Valide Carvalho has first-hand experience of the injuries in Calara.

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In 1977, she sees more than 80 patients, all suffering burn marks, nausea and weakness.

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I was intrigued. Why were all the stories the same? Even when they were attacked in places far from one another.

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And one recurring injury fascinates Dr. Carvalho.

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Usually, there were two little holes or parallel puncture marks, and they could be either on the neck or on the chest, on either side of the body.

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They were accompanied by dermatological burns.

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One theory suggests a more earthly cause of the scars.

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The Amazon basin has nearly 150 different species of bat, three of which are infamous vampire bats.

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Vampire bats are prolific feeders, and their natural source of blood comes from small mammals and birds.

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But in some rare cases, they've been known to take care of the animals.

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Ecologist Leonardo Trevelyne explains how this can happen.

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The interior of the Amazon forest, the populations live in houses that are not so protected, they sleep in hammocks.

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So this may make it easy for the bats.

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But Trevelyne finds a way to make it easier for the animals.

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So this may make it easy for the bats.

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But Trevelyne finds little in the accounts of the Kalaris attacks that indicates typical bat behavior.

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Human encounter with blood-feeding bats, this is not frequent, doesn't happen a lot in big numbers, so that sounds kind of strange to me.

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But the situation in Kalaris is about to take an even stranger turn.

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When the locals' reports reach the Brazilian Air Force, a team of investigators are dispatched to stake out the sleepy corner of the Amazon.

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Kalaris, Brazil, 1977.

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Locals claim that this small fishing community is being terrorized by beams of light shooting down at them from UFOs.

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Dozens of residents are admitted to the hospital complaining of weakness and bearing strange unexplained marks.

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In October 1977, the Brazilian Air Force sent in a team of investigators.

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But in a bizarre twist, that month a doctor treating the patient's injuries has an encounter of her own.

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On October 16th, Dr. Valide Carvalho is returning home from work with a colleague who suddenly becomes weak and faints.

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At that moment, Dr. Carvalho claims to witness a cylindrical metallic object barely 40 feet off the ground.

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It was so low that I could see the color of the metal.

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And to this day, I can't say which metal it was.

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But it was extremely shiny.

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Unlike other sightings, there is no powerful beam of light.

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But Carvalho reports to observe the UFO performing wide circular maneuvers overhead, before disappearing into the distance.

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For the doctor, it's further proof that her patients are telling the truth.

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But when she reports her sighting, the Air Force investigators show little sympathy.

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They told me not to talk anymore, and that if I said that people were being attacked by unidentified flying objects, I could be arrested or kidnapped.

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It soon becomes clear to residents that the Air Force is taking a keen interest in the reports.

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For several months, they camp out in the town to carry out surveillance of the skies.

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The question is, what's keeping them occupied for so long?

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UFO researcher Ajay Javard has studied the Kalara's case.

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A case the Air Force investigators call Operation Saucer.

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This case was investigated by a large structure of men from the Brazilian Air Force.

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In an official dirty, it means it is the largest military operation that we know in the world that was put together to investigate, to do something about the UFO phenomenon.

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And even more mysterious, in January 1978, Operation Saucer is abruptly brought to a halt.

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The Air Force leaves town, no results are released, and the locals' reports seem destined to be buried forever.

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Since the mid-1980s, Ajay has been trying to uncover the truth about the investigation.

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And we put together a campaign that gathered 70,000 signatures asking the government to come clean about it.

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To release its files, they were all old files anyway.

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Then, in 1997, a breakthrough.

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Yurengue Holanda Lima, the captain in charge of Operation Saucer, agrees to a filmed interview with Ajay.

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He confirms what many locals had suspected all along.

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Members of the Air Force had also seen the UFOs.

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After a month, these things appeared right above our team.

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They were right above us, as if they knew what we would do.

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And he gave me very much detailed information of what went on in the previous years of the war.

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During all the four months of Operation Saucer, and after that, during that four months period of time,

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they had the opportunity to film over 16 hours of footage of these objects, sometimes coming from the water,

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sometimes from the air, sometimes several of them, all together in space, coming close.

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And they made over 500 pictures of this.

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They were all classified, of course.

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The captain dies just two months after giving the interview, but it's a major turning point in the quest for information.

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The Brazilian government finally relents and releases the files.

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300 pages of official documentation on Operation Saucer, including drawings, witness statements,

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and most revealing of all, detailed military observations.

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The behavior of the phenomena, the maneuvers of the phenomena, the way they would come so close to the people, to the military,

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and attacking the people, but not the military, while the Operation Saucer lasted.

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All together, all put together, gave to those men, and to their commander in Belém,

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the solid idea that they were dealing with something not from this Earth.

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But the files come to no solid conclusions about what the objects might have been.

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Professor Carolyn Crawford is an astronomer at the University of Cambridge.

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She believes mass sightings of streaking lights in the sky can often be easily explained.

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Ametia is a lump of space rock that's burning up in our atmosphere.

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And there are certainly things about this sighting that are reminiscent of Ametia's shower.

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The idea of the beams of light matches quite well the streaks of light that are left after the passage of Ametia through the sky.

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And according to Professor Crawford, the untrained eye can place subtle tricks on the mind of the observer.

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If you have an isolated bright light in the sky at night, especially if you don't know what it is,

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it's very difficult to judge distances because you don't know how big it should be, you don't know how bright it should be.

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You may be assumed just because it's bright, it's much nearer than it actually is,

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or if it's faint that it's actually further away than it really is.

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And without that sort of comparison, it's very easy for the brain to be forward into the misestimating distances to objects.

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Is it possible a combination of Ametia's shower and collective hysteria led to the mass sightings in Calaris?

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In the 1960s and 70s, Brazil was under the rule of a military dictatorship.

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Paranoia and fear gripped the nation, and many regions suffered poverty.

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Psychologist Dr. Susan Clancy believes the political climate is important in the Calaris case.

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So what we do know about Massist Area is it is most likely to occur during times of socioeconomic decline or change.

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So if you've got a situation when a community is under extreme conditions of poverty or war,

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you're going to be more likely to see this type of thing happen.

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Psychologists think it's like some sort of unconscious manifestation of distress.

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Like because they feel so powerless, they can't address the real issues,

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it's coming out in this sort of type of event.

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Clancy believes that hysteria can escalate even further when respected members of the community are affected.

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The more people that claim they saw it, the more impetus that gives for other people to think they saw it too.

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And then all you need is somebody with authority.

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Somebody who is a respectable member of society or a person that everybody trusts saying this is what happens.

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And then you sort of start seeing this mass panic.

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The key to solving the riddle of the Calaris UFOs could line the photographs and films of the objects taken by the military.

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But when the files are declassified in 2005, the films are conspicuous by their absence.

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So where are they?

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There are approximately 1,300 pages about Operation Sourcer.

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So far only about 300 have been disclosed.

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Why didn't they release the remaining 1,000?

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Why didn't they release the 30 plus hours of footage?

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Why didn't they release all of the photographs?

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The Calaris UFO at Nigma may only be cracked if the tapes and the rest of the files are released.

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Until then, A.J. Givard will continue digging for the truth.

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The population of the society has the right to know this information as well as UF researchers because after all we are society as well.

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And we are very interested in knowing what the government is still hiding about it.

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We don't want only the tip of the iceberg, we want the entire iceberg.

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In 1966, a young driver dies in a mysterious car crash on a straight and empty road.

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But one possible explanation given for his death is shocking.

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You could see in his eyes that that man had experienced something truly unknown.

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Victoria, Australia, April 7th, 1966.

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On a clear night, 19-year-old Gary Taylor is on a long-distance journey from Melbourne to visit relatives in the north of the state.

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He's been on the road for more than six hours when he reaches a straight, empty stretch of road in central Victoria.

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UFO investigator Ben Hurl has studied Gary's story.

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He's driving along the Wimmera Highway by himself and he's approaching an area called Berks Flat.

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As he's approached that area, his car has gotten into a skit and he skidded for about 70 feet.

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For some reason, Gary suddenly loses control of his vehicle. He fears off the road and slams into a tree.

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And Gary was ejected from the car and landed on the side of the road.

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About half an hour later, the police arrive and the ambulance arrive and basically Gary's body is taken to the Sonata Hospital where he is pronounced dead.

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At first light, police begin a road traffic accident investigation.

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The puzzle is, what caused Gary to lose control?

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The highway is dry and there are no sharp bends to explain what happened.

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The report reveals that the 70-foot-long tire marks enable police to calculate the car's speed as it squirms off the road.

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When he actually hit the tree, he was travelling at 70 miles an hour and 70 miles an hour in a Mark I Zephyr is just about got it wound out to the clock.

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Did something spook Gary on that empty road to make him break so suddenly?

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With no witnesses, the investigation draws a blank.

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Gary's death might have been consigned to the road traffic accident records, were it not for an extraordinary twist to the story.

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It comes from 39-year-old Victoria resident Ron Sullivan.

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When the newspaper article appeared and it said that Gary Taylor had been killed at Birks Flat, Ron felt a civic duty to come forward and go to the Maryborough police.

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It mentioned the fact that he had a really strange encounter in that same area.

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8pm April 4th 1966.

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It's just three days before Gary's accident and Ron Sullivan is driving across Birks Flat.

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In the fields ahead and off to the side of the road, he spots a light.

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Actually I thought it was a backlight of a tractor, I didn't take much notice.

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As I got close to it, it flared out on the ground and then the bottom came up.

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It's like a tube, a vertical cone.

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The cone-shaped light appears to sit on the ground.

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The light was contained, it was a very strange light, it never let off shadows or anything.

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It was like a vertical ice cream cone.

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And I thought, holy moly, what in the hell is going on here?

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Seconds later, the phenomenon performs an extraordinary maneuver.

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I went as fast as speed of light straight up in the sky and I thought, what in the hell is going on?

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Ron is shaken by the encounter but thinks nothing more of it until he learns about Gary's death on Birks Flat.

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He had a friend called Hugh Hunter who worked for the Maryborough Advertiser.

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He was a reporter and he was very interested in the actual gun.

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So they both agreed that they would go back to the site.

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Four days after his UFO encounter, Ron and his friend Hugh find a strange circular imprint in the soil of the paddock.

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It's in the exact same spot he believes he saw the UFO and barely 60 feet from the tree where Gary Taylor crashed.

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But is there really a connection between this and the UFO?

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But is there really a connection between this extraordinary series of events?

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Australia 1966.

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In search of a story, newspapers are quick to connect the mystery hole in the ground, Ron's UFO sighting and the death of Gary Taylor.

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But what could possibly link a light in the sky and a crater on the ground?

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Professor Carolyn Crawford offers one possible explanation.

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There certainly are aspects that are very familiar to the idea of meteors or even fireballs streaking through the sky.

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The idea of the colours, the bright lights, the motion, even potentially an impact sight in the ground.

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But for astronomer Nigel Henbest, something about the meteor theory doesn't add up.

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The eyewitness report doesn't say that it moved across the sky to look so about a bright light in a field.

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It looked as if it was on a tractor. That doesn't sound like something moving at a high speed if you thought it was a tractor.

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And the photographs I've seen of the hole in the ground doesn't look like a meteor crater.

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Instead, Henbest sees another potential answer.

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And for me what's interesting is that the planet Jupiter, the second brightest planet, was brilliant that night.

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Quite low down close to the horizon. If you saw Jupiter on the horizon, you might well judge it to be in the field next to you if you didn't know any better.

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So the light in the sky could have been Jupiter.

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But at the Australian National University, Dr. Alice Gorman sees a third possibility.

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She sees striking similarities between Ron's encounter and a strange Australian weather phenomenon.

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I think this is a case of the classic Min Min lights. The Min Min lights are a light phenomenon which was originally identified by Aboriginal people.

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And they're lights which appear to come close and then move far away, they're close to the horizon.

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And they can be quite frightening when people aren't expecting them.

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Dad, no, we have to get driving. We're not stopping.

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The Min Min lights have been reported in Australia for centuries.

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They are said to be hovering orbs of light that appear at night.

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This rare footage shot in Queensland in 2013 shows one family's eerie encounter.

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Scientists think this bizarre phenomenon is created by light from a source many miles away, being refracted through the atmosphere and appearing as a mirage in a new and unlikely place.

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Sometimes called a superior mirage, it's caused by an extreme temperature switch in the air.

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Professor Randy Cerveni is a meteorologist at Arizona State University.

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One of the most plausible explanations that I can see for the Burke's flat situation is that idea of a temperature inversion.

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Temperature inversions are where we have two different layers of the atmosphere with different temperatures.

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So that when you're driving across the desert, for example, and you see a mirage of water, that's usually due to a temperature inversion that has taken place.

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Temperature inversions occur when a layer of cold dense air becomes trapped at ground level beneath a layer of warmer air.

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Common in deserts, they also appear at sea or on vast stretches of wide, flat land.

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And they can refract normal light rays into spectacular, hovering illusions.

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As light goes down through two different layers of air that have different temperatures, it's going to be refracted in different ways.

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And in fact, in some cases, actually totally separate it from the horizon and make it kind of floating in sky.

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So that's why we have a superior mirage.

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In the daytime, mirages can be mesmerizing.

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But at night, the effect can be shocking.

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Dad, no, we have to get driving. We're not stopping.

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Whether Gary Taylor was spooked by Minmin lights or any other phenomenon that night remains a mystery.

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And when Hurl suspects there may be more down-to-earth explanations for Gary's crash.

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He could have easily been avoiding a kangaroo, a rabbit, a fox, or any other number of nighttime creatures.

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It's unknown how much nighttime driving experience he actually had.

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These are the factors that sort of, I think, are around the accident.

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And any one of them is arguably possible.

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Sadly, these are questions for which we may never find answers.

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But for Ron Sullivan, the thing he saw on Burke's flat that night and the memories of what happened to Gary have haunted him ever since.

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I do not know exactly what I saw, but all I know is that it was something out of this world.

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I never believed in your effusion in those days, as all of you are.

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But lately, in the last few years, I often thought, what the heck was that?